Anchorage Daily News

The most popular items at the Tanana grocery store Wednesday: Rubber gloves and cleaning supplies.

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That's because the village, like many along the Yukon and Kuskokwim rivers this week, is a mess.

Workers spent the morning bulldozing dirty river ice from the street. They're pumping water out of the church basement. And patches of town smell like spilled diesel and mud, said Cynthia Erickson, who runs Tanana Commercial with her family and woke up Tuesday to a flood alarm that sent the town scrambling for high ground.

Later they watched as casualties of the violent upriver flooding floated by on the Yukon. "We've seen a house go by," Erickson said. "We've seen outhouses ... A dead moose."

With dozens of people still evacuated to Fairbanks, the remaining Tanana villagers cleaned up Wednesday while farther down the Yukon, local leaders prepared for potential floods of their own.

In Emmonak, they're making a list of elders to evacuate to other villages if necessary and encouraging pregnant women who are due this month or next to leave town early, said resident Nicholas Tucker.

It's still early spring in Emmonak and other communities near the mouth of the Yukon, where people are still snowmachining on the frozen river. Those conditions have the potential to create new ice jams and have hydrologists watching the area as the next potential flood zone.

The state plans to send a "river watch" plane to survey the region this weekend to warn villages of any coming floods, said Jeremy Zidek, spokesman for the state Division of Homeland Security and Emergency Management.

But overall, hydrologists had relatively good news for riverside villages Wednesday, especially on the Kuskokwim River.

There, the National Weather Service said the threat from break-up flooding in Bethel had passed and canceled flood warnings for other nearby villages.

ON THE YUKON

A break-up front has been pushing a wall of water down the Yukon since last week. The start was the worst, when water and ice sunk the old Eagle Village and ruined buildings in Eagle -- just west of the Canadian border.

The wall of water continued downriver, leading to evacuations in Stevens Village. Then it hit Tanana with near record flooding Tuesday, according to the Division of Homeland Security.

"We had to get out of the back (of our store) in our canoe," Erickson said.

More than 70 people, including elders and children, were evacuated, according to the state.

But water levels sank there and in Stevens Village Wednesday. Hydrologists didn't expect serious flooding downriver in Ruby, which sits well above the water.

Unlike Eagle, where the river ice was unusually thick, ice on the middle Yukon has been rotting or breaking up. Tributaries like the Koyukuk River have already been pumping water into the Yukon, lifting and shifting the ice, said National Weather Service hydrologist Ed Plumb in Fairbanks.

Still, as of Wednesday night, the weather service had a flood warning in place for Tanana and Ruby, and a "flood watch" alert for downriver villages from Galena to Holy Cross.

ON THE KUSKOKWIM

On the Kuskokwim, break-up floods prompted leaders in Akiak to evacuate 37 people Friday night, according to The Associated Press.

More evacuations followed in Kwethluk, where locals said many families are sleeping in the school.

"Most of the village is still under water," Theodorsia Alexie, who grew up there, said Wednesday.

Her boat is still parked outside her door, she said. "Slowly, inch by inch, the water's going down."

Communities below Akiak like Akiachak, Bethel and Napakiak saw minor flooding as recently as Tuesday, but the water levels were slowly dropping, said Jim Coe, a hydrologist for the Alaska-Pacific River Forecast Center in Anchorage.

The weather service had still placed a flood warning on the Kuskokwim Delta from Akiachak to Napakiak as of Wednesday night.

But Coe said the threat of break-up flooding in Bethel had passed.

The ice there has moved down the Kuskokwim past the Johnson River -- maybe seven miles downriver from Bethel -- and into the flood plain, he said.

Read The Village, the ADN's blog about rural Alaska, at adn.com/thevillage. Twitter updates: twitter.com/adnvillage. Call Kyle Hopkins at 257-4334.

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